Steven C Smith Oxford University Press 978-0-197-68128-2 312pp (hb) £31.99 Theirs remains one of the most thrilling composer-director collaborations of all time, and while Bernard Herrmann and Alfred

Why we need orchestras

Hailing from Canada’s West Coast, Steven Dann has served as principal viola with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Vancouver and Toronto symphony orchestras, as

Grace Williams loved the sea. In later life, BBC television cameras captured one of her daily morning walks in Barry on the coast of Glamorgan – she strides purposefully along, looking out over the Br

‘We’re going to have a tonal centre and tap our feet, and that’s the way it is.’ Steve Reich is in full flow, talking to me from his home in New York. ‘The big break, the knife down the line, was betw

Kammerorchester Basel/Giovanni Antonini Alpha ALPHA1092 76:29 mins The most familiar of the symphonies here, if only because it has a nickname, is No. 55, whose ‘Schoolmaster’ title arises out of the